After a one-week snow delay, about 20 orienteers gathered at the multi-purpose trailhead at Umstead park for our fifth annual December score-O. Although the weather was generally perfect (mid 50’s and sunny), the ground was very soggy and creek levels were high. In some areas, creek crossings that are typically ankle-deep were up now up to your chest. The wet conditions and the unusually long course combined to ensure that no one was able to clear it. However, Robert Enochs made a valiant attempt, collecting 26 of the 33 controls and winning the four-hour race pretty handily over his arch-rival, Brian Thompson. Lina Lindberg took top honors on the two-hour event, besting long-time orienteer and new BOK member, Yuriy Bulka. Both Lina and Yuriy ran essentially the same course, which went through the flatter north section of the park. I realized when I designed the course that there were not too many route options on the north side — I’ll try to improve on this next year.

Brian has again set up a route gadget page for this event here. Check it out if you want to compare the routes that people took — and upload your own!

Three things conspired to make this year’s race unusually easy and fun to direct. First, Mihai Ibanescu, Lina Lindberg, and Debra Rezeli all helped to put out many of the controls. Second, Imre Polik, Lina Lindberg, Debra Rezeli, and Robert Enochs all helped with control pickup. Many thanks to everyone for all of your help with this. Finally for the first time, I used our new event software, SI-Droid. In general, this software is very easy to use, and it handled our score event fairly well. There was a timing issues with this software that could not get ironed-out before the event which necessitated each runner having to punch start individually, rather than starting everyone at once. This is easily fixable in the future, and otherwise, the system worked great. I recommend that future BOK event directors think seriously about using this program, and thanks to Ian Shields for getting it to work and for technical help.

Results follow. Email Dave at dw.orienteer@gmail.com with comments or corrections.